Concession to Fall

I've been resisting, wanting to stick with the bright vibrant colors of summer. But, today felt like I should be using more fallish colors, deep brown, burgandy and subtle gold.

Lacey Granny Flowers

I know, I know... I just did my nails last night, purple polka dots. But, I woke up this morning and I just wasn't feeling the purples. I love purple, but it just wasn't all that interesting to me, there was no excitement to them. They didn't FEEL like travel appropriate nails (I am heading to Monterey for a few days tomorrow, for work reasons, but there will definitely be plenty of me time too!)
So, I decided to re-do.
And voila!

Much more interesting, right? 

Grapey Ombre Polka Dots

I'm not yet ready to accept that fall colors are appropriate, but feel like it's time to begin moving away from the summer brights. I wanted to do something quick and simple, but bright. 

I mixed different amounts of the medium purpley color that I used for the largest dots with a bright pink to get the different shades. 

Turns out to be a good transitional season color scheme I think. 

Skittles for Nat

My sister's "adopted" 13 yr old daughter informed me last week that I would be painting her nails for her today. And as we typically do for her, the reply was "Okie dokie".
I guess she was in a Skittles mood, because she was hoping I would show up with skittles for her.
I didn't have Skittles, but I said we could do a Skittle manicure. A Skittle manicure is one where the nails all are painted differently.
It took quite a while, but Nat finally picked a cherry based design, and all the colors we'd use.

Simple Polka Dot Lace

I've been lax lately. I have been keeping up painting my nails, but haven't been taking pics. And frankly, the paint jobs I've been doing have been rather basic, by my standards. 

So for the beginning of this week, I decided to go with a brightly colored lace like manicure. 

The color is actually a neon coral, but looks hot pink in these pics. 

I painted a diagonal of black at the inner edge of my nails. 

 Next, using my larger dotting tool I placed evenly spaced dots along the diagonal.

I then placed coral dots within the black dots, using a smaller dotting tool. I also put a couple dots in the black space.

I wanted to do a arch of dots over each dot, so on my pinky I decided to do this completely free form. As you can see, it didn't so much arc over each dot as it just sagged. So sometimes it doesn't always go as planned. 

 I decided to try a different approach, so I first placed dots in the space between the larger dots.

Then to make the arch, I placed dots over the top of the larger dots, which worked out well and gave the look I was going for. Yay!